Pity the Billionaire

The Hard-Times Swindle and the Unlikely Comeback of the Right

(Metropolitan; 225 pages; $25)

Early in this feisty and galvanizing book, Thomas Frank grudgingly gives props to conservative activists and politicians. From President Richard Nixon's electoral stiff-arm of the antiwar movement to the Reagan Revolution to the Newt Gingrich-led Republican takeover of the House of Representatives, the political right has spent more than 40 years staging one renaissance after another.

Politically speaking, Frank concedes, it's been an impressive run. But the current revival - the one that began during the financial crisis of 2008 and saw the birth of the Tea Party and the GOP's dominance of the 2010 midterm elections - is a whole different beast, he says.

"[T]he conservative comeback of the last few years is indeed something unique in the history of American social movements: a mass conversion to free-market theory as a response to hard times," Frank argues. "Before this recession, people who had been cheated by bankers almost never took that occasion to demand that bankers be freed from 'red tape' and the scrutiny of the law. Before 2009, the man in the bread line did not ordinarily weep for the man lounging on his yacht."

This is the kind of analysis - historically astute, irreverent and droll - that makes Frank such an invaluable voice. As he's done in a series of perceptive books - most notably 2004's "What's the Matter With Kansas?" which demonstrated how Republicans exploit social issues to win elections, and why many middle-class conservatives often vote against their own financial interests - Frank cuts through the partisan blather and explains how money and cynical ideas shape a certain kind of contemporary politics. "Pity the Billionaire" is further evidence that he's as good at this as any writer working today.

The book's thesis goes like this: Instead of being punished for wrecking the economy, crooks within the financial community and deregulation-happy politicians, pundits and lobbyists in Washington have used the financial meltdown to their advantage, convincing down-on-their-luck voters that the real problem is big-government meddling and the team of socialists running the White House.

In order to convince their followers that this was not a fairy tale, Frank writes, right-wing leaders needed to paper over the fact that the architects of "the hated bailouts - and the banks that benefited from them - had played on the conservative team." And so about three years ago, the right began tarring "previous generations of conservatives as heretics to free-market orthodoxy. They even excommunicated their old hero, George W. Bush, as a traitor to the cause of freedom." In their place, the conservative movement exhorted its followers to heed the word of the "great god Market," an MBA-toting deity whose "invisible hand ... would restore fairness to a nation laid waste by cronyism and bailouts."

Libertarians, of course, have worshiped the free market since Ayn Rand wore short pants. But the rise of a middle-class movement devoted to upholding the core principles of Wall Street - leave us be, you meddling government lackeys, and allow us to make our millions in peace - is something wholly new, he says.

To illustrate his point, Frank takes an instructive look at the post-Depression years alongside the country's response to the '08 collapse. In the 1930s, the labor movement sprang to life. New agencies like the Federal Deposit Insurance Corp. were assigned to keep the banks in check, and the rich were hit with higher tax rates. The economy eventually improved (admittedly oversimplified, these are the basic facts). When the economy crashed 70 years later, Republican elected officials tried to destroy organized labor, conservatives took to the streets to call for even more deregulation, and rich people got tax cuts.

And as a result, Frank writes, "moneyed interests understand that with no second FDR, no incorruptible new cop on the financial beat, no return to the rules that once made banking boring but safe, they have nothing to fear from us, and may do as they please."

Almost all of the book's criticisms are aimed at conservatives, and yet the most devastating part of "Pity the Billionaire" might be Frank's use of President Obama's own words to explain why so many on the left have been disappointed with his stewardship. Obama, Frank reminds us, wrote in his 2006 best-seller "The Audacity of Hope" "that as a consequence of my fund-raising I became more like the wealthy donors I met." To which Frank adds with resignation, "So he has."